Pipes bursting in the thaw that followed last week's arctic freeze and sent water pressure tumbling in New Orleans generated more than 450 work orders to repair leaks to city-owned pipes, according to an update given Tuesday (Jan. 23) by Sewerage & Water Board officials. Of those repair orders, roughly one-fourth were closed as of Monday afternoon.

Utility officials delivered a wrap-up report on what happened to city's water system during last week's freeze at the New Orleans City Council's Public Works Committee meeting held Tuesday. Their report catalogued a timeline of declining pressures across the city and the boil advisory period, as well as provided an update on ongoing customer service, staffing and billing issues.

The Louisiana Department of Health last Friday said the freeze had prompted at least 84 boil-water advisories throughout the state, including New Orleans, where officials said widespread leaks from both public and private pipes combined with heavy faucet dripping led to pressure drops below unsafe levels. Much of New Orleans' east bank was given the all clear Friday night after being under a boil advisory for nearly 36 hours, followed by the lifting of a roughly 69-hour advisory for New Orleans East, according to utility officials.

In total, 452 repair orders were generated to repair leaks between last Tuesday and Monday, officials said. Of those, 143 orders had been closed as of 5 p.m. Monday, 84 of which related to leaks already scheduled for repairs prior to the freeze.

On top of around 100 utility employees tasked with making emergency repairs to water mains, pipes and valves, officials said the Sewerage & Water Board called in contractors to help undertake major repairs. Officials said those contractors included Wallace C. Drennan Inc., which fielded 50 repair orders, and Flemming Construction Co., which fielded 67 orders.

At Tuesday's meeting, councilmembers pressed utility officials for more information about the process of bringing in contractors to make repairs. They stressed the need for Sewerage & Water Board to build up in-house staff to avoid costly contractor payments.

"We need to deal with that problem and fill the empty (in-house staff) slots so that the need to contract becomes less," said Councilman James Gray, who represents New Orleans East and the Lower 9th Ward.

Sewerage & Water Board's interim executive director, Marcie Edwards, said contractors are typically called in for heavy emergency repair periods at utilities across the country. Edwards, who previously has headed up both Anaheim Public Utilities and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said Tuesday that utility officials do not yet have an estimate for how much emergency leak repairs have cost.

Pressed further, Edwards also said tracking and scheduling work orders at Sewerage & Water Board is hampered by antiquated logging systems and high staff turnover.

"We've had some significant disruptions not just at the top but at the middle-management level," Edwards said Tuesday.

"I understand that there is an issue of these are the people flying the plane," she continued. "And the people who are supposed to quantify their work, make projections, communicate -- a lot of them have turned over."

Still, Councilwoman Susan Guidry, who represents much of Uptown, Mid-City and Lakeview, said she received emails from constituents last week that noted ongoing leaks existing long before the freeze set in. Those emails stated one fire hydrant, which was reported to having been taped shut, has been leaking for four years, and a 3-year leak from a manhole cover is leaving a pool of water that "you could grow crawfish in," Guidry said.

"I'd like to hear the full story," Guidry said Tuesday. "How many complaints do you have that still have not been addressed?"

Edwards, in response, said that in her 15 days so far as interim executive director, she's found many of the systems in place to track leak complaints and repair orders are "outdated." For example, Edwards noted the utility's tracking system does not currently distinguish between sewage and water complaints, complicating the task of prioritizing repairs.

Until her tenure ends in May, Edwards said she will be largely focused be on shoring up Sewerage & Water Board's work-order tracking, customer service and billing systems.

"I also need to find out where are we in terms of our normal workload management, why do we have these long-term outstanding issues, how are they being tracked and communicated and scheduled," Edwards said. "So to be frank, I don't have that information myself as of now."

"Please allow me a little bit of time to try and figure out where we are and to prioritize some of the remediations," she added.

Aside from tracking, councilmembers honed in on Sewerage & Water Board's new billing system, which officials say faced rollout problems last year that have led to thousands of overbilling complaints. Councilwoman Guidry said she understands the new system had been estimating customer water use in monthly billing cycles, leading in one case to a $7,000 charge for a house she said is usually unoccupied.

"There's no question that people are being billed higher and not lower," Guidry said.

Edwards, who noted Tuesday she's tackled bad billing rollouts three times in her career, said there's "no date certain" yet for billing issues to be fully corrected. She and other utility officials pointed Tuesday to plans for new electronic meter readers, which they said are aimed to come online in 2019.

In the meantime, officials stressed the need to bolster Sewerage & Water Board's depleted staff, which is short hundreds of budgeted positions due in large part to turnover. Officials said Tuesday that a draft of a compensation study has been completed and should figure into efforts to incentivize hiring and retention through better salaries.

But Councilwoman-At-Large Stacey Head said Tuesday that that study may not be enough as-is. She said Sewerage & Water Board ought to take steps to pare back its generous pension benefits and pump more money into salaries now rather than holding for retirement.

"We've got a platinum-plus pension system at the Sewerage & Water Board," Head said Tuesday. "We need to fix the rules so that they are rational."